


the big picture

by randomling



Category: Popslash
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-11 02:26:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomling/pseuds/randomling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris and Lance have been together for a long time. Are the details getting away from them?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pensnest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pensnest/gifts).



“This isn’t working,” Lance said to himself, leaning back in his chair. After another moment’s thought, he yanked at the top sheet of paper until it came free, crumpled it up and tossed it over his shoulder in the direction of the trash.

“ _Quit_ that,” Chris said. Lance looked behind him; the ball of paper was lying at Chris’s feet. Chris stepped forward, kicking the paper behind him. He set the coffee mug by Lance’s elbow. “Coffee. Not that you deserve it.” He placed a kiss on the top of Lance’s head.

Lance sighed. Chris’s hands came up to Lance’s shoulders and Lance sighed, relaxing into the touch. Chris gave Lance’s shoulders a gentle squeeze, enough to make some of the tension in Lance’s shoulders dissipate.

“Not going well?”

Lance twisted his pencil between his fingers. “No.”

“Y’know, some people use technology these days,” Chris said, leaning forward to pluck the pencil from Lance’s hand. “Keeps you from hitting your boyfriend in the head with pieces of paper.”

“Oh, man,” Lance said. He tried to keep from laughing - he shouldn’t really laugh at Chris’s pain - but it was a losing battle. “Did I hit you in the head? I’m sorry.”

“You did.” Chris was propping himself up on Lance’s back now, chin pressed into Lance’s shoulder. “You’re gonna have to make that up to me later.”

Lance let out another chuckle and turned his head to kiss Chris’s temple. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Okay,” Chris said, straightening up abruptly, removing weight and body heat from Lance’s back. He squeezed Lance’s shoulders a second time, patted him twice on the shoulder for good measure, and turned away. “Get back to work. We got rent to pay.”

“Pencil?” Lance said.

The pencil clattered against Lance’s drawing board and hit the floor.

*

Lance was having a pretty bad day. It wasn’t until attempt number fourteen that he started to hit his stride, and even then he wasn’t totally happy with how it was going. It was a commission for a straight wedding - the groom’s wedding gift to his fianceé - and Lance couldn’t help but compare his own situation. He and Chris had been together… what was it, coming up on ten years now? And like a lot of long-term couples, he guessed, they’d gotten into a rut. He couldn’t remember when they’d last done something romantic, or even taken each other out for dinner. Had to have been years.

After a while you just started taking each other for granted.

Lance kept finding himself choking down a rising feeling of bitterness as he drew. The commission was pretty sappy, befitting a couple who were deeply in love, and once, Lance thought, he might have hoped for a gesture like that from Chris. Nowadays he knew Chris just wasn’t wired that way. Chris thought a couple of beers and a handjob in front of a football game made a romantic evening. And it wasn’t like Lance objected to nights like that, but sometimes he found himself wanting - 

\- more.

Some vague, unspecified more.

He wound up getting pretty absorbed in his work. Enough that when he looked up it was dark out, and he only looked up in the first place because Chris was tapping on the door. Lance turned.

“Hungry?” Chris said.

“Yeah,” Lance said, and then, “Crap,” because it was his turn to cook. He glanced at the clock - it was almost seven - and dropped his pencil, letting it roll to the bottom of the drawing board. “What do we have?” he asked, which was already admitting defeat, because he should have planned this more than five minutes before dinnertime. He pushed wearily out of his chair and got to his feet. His back hurt from too many hours leaning over the drawing board, sketching and re-sketching, erasing and trying again.

Chris gave a wry smile. “S’okay,” he said lightly. “Pizza?”

*

Chris even paid for the pizza. It said something about the state of the relationship that Lance immediately wondered about Chris’s motives: they were pretty religious about taking turns for dinner. When he’d made the phone call, Chris went to the corner store for beer. Lance did the dishes and then wandered around the house, collecting coffee mugs and trash, feeling at a loose end.

He was upstairs when the door closed with a bang. By the time he got down to the kitchen, Chris was yanking beer cans out of the six-pack and shoving them in the fridge. “Want one now?” Chris asked, holding out a can.

Lance put down the coffee mugs to take it. “Sure. Thanks.”

The beer wasn’t all that cold, but it tasted okay. Lance threw out the trash he’d collected from upstairs, dumped two coffee mugs in the sink, and went into the living room. “You want a movie?” Lance called, and heard a reply that sounds like “okay”. He left his beer on the coffee table to rummage through their DVD collection, wondering what Chris might feel like watching. Action? Something cute by Pixar? Something Christmassy? It was coming up on the season.

It wasn’t long before Chris appeared, but for once, their argumepnt about movies was fairly good-natured. Chris cut himself off in the middle of a sentence when the doorbell rang. By the time he was back with pizza boxes - and a couple little cardboard boxes which looked like they might be dessert - Lance had calmed down a little.

“ _Toy Story_?” he said. A compromise.

“Sure,” Chris said, and handed Lance a box of pizza.

*

They’d probably seen _Toy Story_ nine or ten times by now. Chris did a pretty good Woody, and could recite quite a lot of the lines. Lance sat back, ate his pizza, drank his beer, and watched the show. How long was it since they’d even had a low-key night in like this, with take-out and watching Chris mimic movie characters? Even that, it must have been months. Lance couldn’t remember.

Maybe they were getting old.

It was a funny thing to reflect on while watching a kids’ movie. Especially when Chris was enjoying it so much, showing his inner twelve-year-old in a way that still endeared him to Lance, even after all this time. But it did seem like they were getting old faster than normal. They were so focused on work, and on the day-to-day dealing with the house, that it seemed like they rarely had any time to have fun. Lance would go hang out with Joey, Chris would spend time with Justin or JC if they were in town, but together? What did they do together any more, except cooking and laundry?

It was a shame, Lance thought, and he was still thinking that it was a shame when the credits rolled and he was full of pizza and beer and cheesecake, and Chris had kicked off his sneakers and was pressing his feet into Lance’s thigh.

“Hey,” Chris said, at just about the same moment as Lance reached for the remote. Lance looked at him. “Hey, put that down a second.”

“What is it?” Lance said. He let the remote fall onto his knee. Chris was stretched out across the sofa, his third beer of the night in his hand, looking at Lance in a way that Lance barely recognised. Funny, he thought he knew all of Chris’s expressions like the back of his hand.

He raised his eyebrows questioningly. Chris turned the beer bottle in his hand.

“Wanna get married?” Chris said.


	2. Chapter 2

“He said _no,_ ” Chris said.

Justin’s image froze mid-grin, and Chris frowned deeply; Justin was _laughing_ at him. This really wasn’t the time. Lance had gone out - his agent was taking him to lunch, lucky fucker - and Chris was taking the opportunity to unburden on Justin over Skype. Last night… hadn’t gone well.

The image animated again, and the sound cut back in: Justin was suppressing a chuckle. Badly. “I’m sorry, dude,” he said, “that’s just - it’s not funny.”

“It’s actually not,” Chris said irritably.

“I mean, you guys have been together _how_ long?” Justin said. “And you finally ask him. How did you do it?”

“I just asked him,” Chris said. Justin just gave him a _look_ , the one that meant ‘keep talking’, and Chris sighed and went on. “After dinner, over a beer.”

“Did you get down on one knee?” Justin asked.

“Lance isn’t a woman, kid.”

“Did you?”

“No.” Chris fumbled for his coffee, found it, took a slow sip as Justin gave him a recriminating look. “We were on the couch.”

“Oh, Chris,” Justin said. At least this time he had the courtesy to try not to grin, even if he was doing a crappy job. “Chris, no.”

*

It was lucky Justin was in Paris, because otherwise he probably would have driven right over. That would have been pretty annoying. Instead, he sent JC, who showed up an hour later, apparently on his way home from a shopping trip, several bags hanging off each arm. “You’re not gonna make me over, right?” Chris asked. JC gave him a withering look and strode past him into the house.

JC left the bags in a corner of the kitchen. Chris made coffee, and JC talked. About ‘romance’ and ‘gestures’ and ‘making an impression’, and Chris bit back several sarcastic responses. Eventually, once coffee was made and Chris was sitting with him at the kitchen table, JC at last asked a useful question.

“So why do you wanna marry him?”

“Uh,” Chris said. “Well. Um. Our tenth anniversary’s coming up, and it’s legal now, and it - “

“ - it makes sense?” JC rolled his eyes hard. “Do you love him?”

Chris snorted. “What? Of course I do. Ten years, remember?”

JC looked at Chris for a long moment across the kitchen table. “That doesn’t mean - “ he began, but before he could finish the sentence, there was the sound of the front door opening. JC started and looked over his shoulder as the door shut again.

“Chris, you home?”

Damn, but Lance knew how to project. “In the kitchen,” he called. A moment later Lance appeared, sunglasses perched on top of his head, looking tan and slightly dishevelled. He saw JC as he reached up to take off the shades and broke into a sunny grin.

“‘C! What are you doing here?” He placed a kiss on the side of JC’s cheek and they shared a brief, one-armed hug.

“Just passing through,” JC said. “I had a heavy load, and Chris offered me coffee.” He gestured in the direction of his shopping bags. Lance put on an expression of exaggerated surprise.

“Are you trying to bankrupt Justin?” Lance asked.

JC barked a laugh. “Guy needs a hobby.”

Lance laughed too, patting JC on the shoulder. “Of course,” he said. Chris wanted badly to exchange a furtive look with JC, but he knew Lance would notice, so he grinned instead. Lance flopped down in a seat next to JC, and the conversation turned to Lance’s lunch with his agent.

*

JC emailed that evening, in his usual abbreviated style - JC could do flowery language, but he didn’t really believe in greetings or sign-offs, especially not when the five of them had known each other more than fifteen years. It read:

_but do you really love him?_

Chris, curled up on the couch with his phone, flinched. He typed _of course I do_ without thinking, then let the phone drop onto the couch cushion between his thighs. He glanced over at the TV, where the Steelers were getting their asses kicked, and back down at the phone, where the unfinished email was still glaring at him from the screen. He glared back until the phone got tired and locked itself, then swung his feet to the floor. He had to force his reluctant feet to take him out of the living room, along the downstairs hall, up the stairs, and two doors over to Lance’s studio. The door was closed; Lance was working.

Working, no doubt, on the wedding piece that had started this whole mess.

Chris’s hand hovered above the door handle. It hadn’t been the legalisation, or the financial advantages, or the anniversary. It had been the pinched, pained look on Lance’s face when he mentioned the wedding commission. It had hit Chris like a ton of bricks: Lance actually _cared_ about that? Enough that drawing a wedding picture upset him? He’d known then that he had to do something. He knew now, he had to do something _more._

He just didn’t know what. He sucked in a deep breath and knocked on the door.

“Yeah,” Lance’s voice said.

Chris opened the door. Lance had turned at his table and was looking at Chris. a questioning look on his face. Chris felt awkward, and this time he wasn’t even bringing a cup of coffee for a peace offering. That had been a mistake. “Hey,” he said softly.

“Hey.”

“Listen, Lance - “ he began, and swallowed hard. Lance looked irritated underneath the curiosity, which didn’t surprise Chris. He’d interrupted Lance mid-flow, probably. “Uh. You do know that I love you, right?”

The expression on Lance’s face changed as if he’d flipped a switch - but in the wrong direction. Suddenly there was nothing on Lance’s face but barely-disguised bitterness and, yeah. Fury.

“ _Do_ you?” Lance asked.


	3. Chapter 3

Lance sighed and sat back in the kitchen chair. They’d cleared the air, at least. They’d been talking so long now that Lance’s throat was dry, and the dregs of his coffee had gone cold at the bottom of the mug. This was nothing that he’d expected when he headed back up to the studio after dinner. He couldn’t remember the last time Chris had said the word “love”.

Come to that, he couldn’t think of the last time _he’d_ said it, either. They’d -

“I feel like we’ve forgotten why we wanted to be together in the first place,” Lance said.

Chris turned, coffee pot in one hand. He was smiling, but Chris had a hundred smiles: one for every occasion, with a few left over. This one was a little sad. “You really want to live with the crazy asshole I was ten years ago?”

“Hey, I fell in love with that crazy asshole.”

“Guess you must have been crazy too.” Chris crossed the room and refilled both of their coffee mugs before he sat down, setting the coffee pot on the wood of the table between them. On instinct, Lance moved the pot onto a placemat and watched Chris’s smile change. He could always tell when Chris felt criticised.

“I - “ Lance began.

“No, you’re right, I’m a dumbass,” said Chris, waving his hand dismissively.

“You’re not,” Lance said. “That’s not what I mean by that, it’s - “ He flexed his fingers uselessly. “It’s automatic, that’s all, I don’t mean to say you’re stupid. I know you don’t think of that stuff the way I do.” If he stretched his arm, he could touch Chris’s hand with the very tips of his fingers. “My way of being a crazy asshole, I guess.”

“One of ‘em,” Chris conceded. He looked up at Lance, and Lance saw the flash of humour in his eyes, the one that softened his words and reminded Chris of the way they used to talk when they were nothing more than friends. “Don’t worry, I still got a bunch.”

Chris stretched his arm too, enough to link his fingers with Lance’s. Lance felt something in him loosen at the contact, like there was more said with the simple touch of Chris’s hand than a marriage proposal. “Believe me, I know,” he said, smiling, and didn’t let go of Chris’s hand as he said, “I do still love you too, you know.”

It was a strange fact of life, or at least life with Chris: only when Chris stopped smiling did you know he was happy. It meant the walls were coming down.

*

Three cups of coffee after dinner was three cups too many. Lance had known that from the get-go. The net result was that both of them were awake at two the next morning, in bed but still alert to talk. It was maybe another sign of the routine they’d gotten into that it felt weird to have time and energy to talk to each other in bed. Usually either Lance was fast asleep by the time Chris got to bed, or the other way around - a disadvantage of busy and unpredictable lives. So it felt nice to lie like this, one arm around Chris’s belly, their fingers threaded together.

“This is nice,” Lance murmured, his mouth against Chris’s neck. Chris made a soft sound of agreement, and Lance wondered vaguely if Chris was going to sleep. He was proved wrong when Chris disentangled his hand from Lance’s and rolled over, nestling his head against Lance’s shoulder. Lance readjusted until he was comfortable, letting his hand find its way into the small of Chris’s back.

“Do you think we can do it?” Chris asked, so softly that Lance had to strain to catch the next part. “Do you think we can fix us?”

“I hope so,” Lance said. It wasn’t like none of this was his fault; he’d let things go, too. “I think so,” he added, “if we try.”

Chris wrapped his arm around Lance’s waist, pulling their bodies, and - ah, Lance remembered this. This closeness, feeling Chris’s body heat, hearing each breath pull in and sigh out. He placed a kiss on Chris’s forehead and let his eyes drift closed. Maybe _he_ was going to sleep. “Gonna try,” Chris murmured.

“Me, too,” Lance said.

*

Lance finished the wedding commission the next day, and was glad to send it off and have it off his plate. The day after that, he had to get on a plane to New York for a show, leaving Chris behind to work. Chris drove him to the airport, and the atmosphere in the car was much better than it had been for a long time, despite the LA traffic and exhaust fumes. All in all, Lance reflected on the plane, he felt better about things between them than he had in a long time.

The show went fine; Lance sold three big pieces, had a useful dinner with a New York art dealer, gave an interview to a tiny art magazine. Better yet, he and Chris kept texting, and Lance was reminded of the hundreds of flirty texts they’d sent in the first few months of their relationship. When he and Joey met for lunch on day two of the show, Lance found himself telling all. It was nice, for once, not to be asking Joe’s advice on how to fix things.

Shows were hard work. After four days, Lance was glad to put away his schmoozing skills and head home. He caught the red-eye home and was glad to fall into a cab at LAX. He stumbled through the door just after 4am and found Chris hogging the covers, curled up in a ball, looking small and vulnerable. He stripped down to his underwear and coaxed some of the covers from Chris’s iron grip.

He woke up six hours later convinced that Chris had grabbed him just as he drifted off.


	4. Chapter 4

“I don’t know,” Chris said for what was probably the hundredth time. Justin, back from Paris, was barely paying attention, flipping through photographs on his Mac. It was JC who had asked the question; he gave Chris a reproachful look and turned his attention back to the toenail he was painting. “I really don’t. I’m not good at this romance stuff.”

“That’s why _we’re_ here,” said JC. “But we can’t help if you don’t have _some_ ideas.”

“Let’s face it, J isn’t helping.” Chris was frustrated. Their tenth anniversary was two weeks away, and he was _stumped._ They’d been doing so much better the past couple of months, and Chris wanted to celebrate. And to resurrect the thing that hadn’t worked so well over pizza and beer.

“What does Lance like?”

There was a long list of things, and at the top of it were all the things Lance liked in bed - they’d been doing a _lot_ better in that area. They didn’t really count for a marriage proposal, though; even Chris, who knew nothing about romance, knew that much. Then there was a more general list. “I don’t know. Art. Dogs? Beer? C’mon, you’ve known him for as long as me.”

“I haven’t been sleeping with him for a decade, Chris,” JC reminded him. Chris smiled, and JC made a face. “Don’t do that. Think.”

Chris thought, sipping on his beer as he did so, but nothing particularly amazing came to mind. Beside him on the couch, Justin snorted, but it was nothing to do with the conversation; he was deleting a bad photo. “I could take him for dinner?” Chris mused.

“That’s a start,” JC said. “Does he have a favourite place?”

“Hmm,” Chris said, and he took a long pull of his beer.

*

JC helped immensely with the preparations, with Justin occasionally throwing in ideas. Joey was initiated into the conspiracy a few days later; there were things best friends knew that boyfriends never would. Between the four of them, Chris figured they could do something that Lance wouldn’t hate.

He woke terrified on the morning of the anniversary.

Lance was already up, and when Chris got downstairs, he seemed to be in a sunny mood, making eggs and brewing coffee while humming along to the radio in his deep voice. “Morning, sleepyhead,” he said.

Chris made an incoherent noise shuffled over to where Lance was standing and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Happy anniversary.”

“Happy anniversary.” Lance put one arm snugly around Chris’s waist and kissed his mouth, briefly but firmly. “Zombie, huh?”

“Cooooofffeeeeee,” Chris replied, and Lance laughed.

They ate a quiet breakfast, after which Lance headed up to his studio and Chris headed out for final preparations. It wasn’t until a little after four that Chris knocked on Lance’s door, heart in his throat. Lance came to the door, which was unusual, and leaned on the doorframe. “Hey.”

“Hey. You feel like going to dinner?”

There was a flash of surprise on Lance’s face, and he said, “Sure.”

Chris waited, trying to breathe normally and calm himself down, while Lance showered and changed. The worst part of the plan was that it started with a two-hour drive; Chris didn’t mind the driving, but it would be a long wait to the big reveal, and he could imagine about a thousand ways Lance might react. When Lance appeared in the downstairs hallway, Chris sucked in a breath and tried to swallow his nerves. He held out his hand.

*

Lance’s favourite restaurant was in Santa Barbara. Lance asked a couple of times where the hell they were going, but when Chris only answered, “You’ll see,” he sat back in the passenger seat and looked pleased. Chris decided he was going to take that as a good sign.

It was a better sign when they turned a corner and Lance grinned hugely. “You remembered,” he said.

“I had a little help.”

Chris watched Lance as they were seated, as their waiter took their order. Lance kept glancing over Chris’s shoulder at the sea view, and that was something he’d never really understood about Lance. He knew Lance loved the _beach_ , but…

“Are you gonna paint that someday?”

Lance met Chris’s eye and grinned. “Maybe.”

“Cool.”

While they ate, Chris kept being tempted to jump the gun - and reminding himself that there was a plan in place. They talked about art as they ate, a topic that had come and gone a thousand times in the many years they’d known each other: about what Lance wanted to do with his work next, about the next show and whether Chris could come to London, what Lance’s agent had to say about sourcing commissions. Sometimes talking about art made Chris feel dumb and inadequate - Lance had so much specialist knowledge - but tonight seemed to be a charmed night, one where Chris felt he might actually have something to contribute. Lance was at his most animated talking about art, his eyes alive, hands making expressive gestures in front of him.

While the waiter cleared their plates, Chris put one hand into his pants pocket and touched the box there with the tips of his fingers. Not long now; he just had to wait for the waiter to get out of here. It seemed to take forever, but when the waiter had finally disappeared with the last of their dirty crockery, Chris reached for Lance’s hand. Lance gave it, looking slightly perplexed. But not, Chris thought, in a _bad_ way.

“Lance…” he began, at the same moment as a shadow fell over the table. He looked up, irritated.

“Would you guys like to see a dessert menu?” the waiter asked in a chirpy voice.

Chris opened his mouth, his brain too full of words he’d been preparing for days to figure out a coherent response. It was Lance who saved them: “Give us a couple of minutes.”

“Sure,” said the waiter, and bounced off like a puppy. Chris breathed a sigh of relief and felt Lance squeeze his hand encouragingly.

“You were saying,” Lance said gently.

“Yeah. Lance.” He took a breath. “Honey. These past few months, we’ve worked really hard on this relationship. And we’ve gotten so much better. Don’t you think?” Lance nodded. “And I…” He cleared his throat, his mouth dry. “I want you to know that I love you, Lance, I love you so much. And - “

He paused, not for effect but because he needed to clear his throat again. He reached into his pocket with his free hand and pulled out the box, held it in his hand while he gathered himself for the next bit. “I want you to marry me, Lance,” he said. “Will you?”

He fumbled with the box briefly and couldn’t open it one-handed. He let go of Lance’s hand and opened the box with a snap, then placed it on the table where Lance could see the ring. It was a couple of seconds before he dared to look up at Lance’s face.

Lance looked utterly stunned. He blinked once, twice, and Chris found himself looking at those pale green eyes. With candlelight reflected in them, they were beautiful.

“Oh, my God,” Lance said softly. “Yes.”

*

It was a nice drive back, late at night along the coastline with the sea at their side. Chris was in a daze, even an hour later still dealing with the fact that this wonderful man had agreed to marry him, so he came back to reality with a start when Lance pulled over. “This isn’t home,” he said.

“Just a pit stop. C’mon.”

Lance got out of the car and Chris followed him down onto the beach. At the sea’s edge, Lance bent to take off his shoes and socks and rolled up the legs of his pants. Chris did the same. Lance took a few steps further until the waves lapped his ankles, and held out his hand to Chris. When Chris took his hand, Lance tugged Chris close. He wrapped his arms around Chris from behind.

“It’s a beautiful ring,” Lance said, holding it up. Chris touched it, then looked up at Lance’s face. The ring suited him, that was for sure. “And I had a wonderful night. Thank you.”

Chris leaned back against Lance’s chest. Lance squeezed him around the middle, kissing the top of Chris’s shoulder.

“You deserve it,” Chris said.

He turned in Lance’s arms and pressed a kiss into Lance’s neck. And for a long time they held each other, saying nothing, hearing only each other’s breath and the roar of the sea.


End file.
